If you love NPR's weekly "Science Friday" program (and who doesn't), you'll want to be listening today at 3-4pm EST/Noon-1pm SLT, when indefatigable host Ira Flatow appears in SL to discuss "Virtual Worlds, Virtual Lives" with Cory Linden and several esteemed experts. You can even IM questions for the show to Ira via his avatar, Ira Flatley, who'll be in-world throughout the show. Possible question: what does it say that the avatar of Second Life's Chief Technology Officer is a tribute to a parody of "intelligent design", the notion that the world was created with deliberation and aforethought by a higher power?

Avatars who are into grungy, decrepit, rat-infested art spaces should head to the new Cannery Art Gallery (Teleport SLURL), which just opened yesterday. Shoshana Epsilon and Vint Falken, two prominent SL
photographers, are curating the first show "SLart
at the Cannery" featuring the work of six photographers in the seaside industrial space, created by virtual developer Rezzable.

I happened upon one of the organizers, RightasRain Rimbaud, who gave me some of the background on the build. "The idea for the cannery gallery came from taking SL photos and posting them on Flickr," RightasRain explained. "There is a very active SL community over there, where I had the chance to meet lots of SL photographers... this is good example of how we are trying to link online communities with SL."

"But why make it so, um, dirty," I asked, as a rat inched its way toward me.

"Well, we were attracted to the idea of an abandoned space," he replied.

Check out the gritty build on your own, but mind the rodents.

Also coming up this week: the curious men of Caledon, a new home for the Quebecois, twelve hours of British breakbeat, surviving cancer, and preparing for disasters (and not just sim crashes). All that tons more after the break...

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Veteran machinima impresario Hugh Hancock is helping put together the upcoming Machinima Europe Festival, and though they're overloaded with entries created in other 3D engines, he's noticed a peculiar lacuna: "It's the largest Machinima film festival ever, I think," he writes, "and currently we're not seeing a lot of SL submissions."

To create and model "zOMG, fashion!", Ms. Kreegan used Sophisticate 3, a skin from Tete a Pied, Vivid Natural eyes from Miriel Enfield; the expression is a female typing override from Motion Merchant. She's seen here at the Linden Lifestyles Headquarters in Calla.

Perhaps it's fitting, in a year when a tad too much anarchic activity at Burning Man leads to the festival's organizers having a man arrested for arson, that Burning Life, the Lindens' annual tribute to the Black Rock event, leads to demands to censor a non-sexual nude statue in a PG area of the virtual playa. NWN demographtrix Tateru Nino reports for the Second Life Insider:

The sudden appearance of figleafing boxes marked "CENSORED" started to draw a crowd... Then the pair calmly explained that they had been asked by Linden Lab
to place the censorship boxes, and that they were working on finding a
mature BL parcel for the statue.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Marianne McCann presents this image with the WIA Head Down Little Girl
gesture by Baby Thorne and the Linden's generic sad expression.
Marianne's skin is by Robin Sojourner. She calls her entry
"blog.secondlife.com ", for there is a story behind it.